[Community-Discuss] Blog: A Comprehensive audit of the AFRINIC WHOIS Database

[Owen DeLong]

> On Feb 11, 2021, at 03:49 , Noah <noah at neo.co.tz> wrote:

> 

> 

> 

> On Thu, 11 Feb 2021, 14:42 Owen DeLong, <owen at delong.com <mailto:owen at delong.com>> wrote:

> 

> 

>> On Feb 9, 2021, at 14:11 , Noah <noah at neo.co.tz <mailto:noah at neo.co.tz>> wrote:

>> 

>> Hi AFRINIC Team,

>> 

>> While reading the report, I noted that among the recommendations on how to make things better, was below.

>> 

>> The report recommends that the AFRINIC community critically assess how best the accuracy of the information pertaining to Legacy Resource Holders can be improved and considers whether unused legacy resources should be left idle while AFRINIC exhausts its remaining pool of IPv4 addresses.

>> How much unused legacy resources are we looking at?  

> 

> There is literally no way to know whether legacy resources are used or not.

> 

> Did you read the statement that formed part of the recommendation from AFRINIC or you are jumping to conclusions.


Yes, I read the statement.


> AFRINIC is asking us the community to consider whether unused legacy resources should be left idle while AFRINIC exhausts its remaining pool and my question to AFRINIC was simple…


Yes, I understand the request and I understand your question, but while the question is simple, the answer is not. At least not as I understood your original question.


> How much unused legacy resources are we looking at?


Are you now asking what is the total amount of space covered by legacy registrations in the AfriNIC database or are you asking how much legacy space is currently idle?

Addresses covered by legacy registrations will fall into one of the following utilization scenarios:

1.	Actively announced in publicly visible BGP by the registrant or a legitimate designee: obviously in-use.
2.	Announced in publicly visible BGP, but not by an unauthorized party: May or may not also be in legitimate use by the registrant.
		It may or may not be possible for a third party such as the RIR to identify such a situation.
		It may or may not be possible to determine the utilization status by the registrant.
3.	Not announced  in publicly visible whois, but still in legitimate use by the registrant:
		It may or may not be possible for a third party such as the RIR to identify such a situation.
		It may or may not be possible for the RIR to confirm utilization.
4.	Not announced in publicly visible whois and not actually i use by the registrant:
		It may be impossible for the RIR to distinguish this from condition 3 above.
5.	Registrant organization or individual no longer exists.
		It can be difficult to determine this with any degree of certainty. Especially with the various murky ways that
		legacy registrants have been known to create successor organizations or individuals through chains of custody
		not involving or updating records with RIRs over many years.

So… I am not jumping to conclusions, I am speaking from rather significant experience grappling with this problem in more than
one RIR over more than a decade.

Owen



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